Chicago shows its broad shoulders and personality in 2016 Olympic bid

By Mike Lopresti, Gannett

The International Olympic Committee sits down in Denmark Friday to select the host city for the 2016 Games, and Chicago is bringing out the big gun to woo voters; a powerful and influential voice recognized in every corner of the planet.

We refer, of course, to Oprah Winfrey.

Oh, is President Obama going to Copenhagen, too?

That’s nice, considering he’s pretty busy at the moment with the many crises brewing in Washington. Health care. The economy. The Redskins.

But it’s crunch time for Chicago, and there is stiff competition from the other three finalists. Madrid has European charm. Transportation is vital to the IOC, and you could set your watch by Tokyo’s train system. Rio de Janeiro has Copacabana beach, and the argument that South America finally deserves its own Olympiad — even if the entire continent produced only five gold medals last summer in Beijing.

Plus, the suspicion here is that some members of the IOC wouldn’t vote for an American city with a bayonet to their backs.

Chicago worried about the outcome of an election? There are several past city aldermen spinning in their graves, since the solution seems so clear — rig it.

Not so easy to do now, however. So Chicago will have celebrities, past Olympians and other VIPs in Denmark. Plus Barack Obama, on the reasonable hope that since he could sway voters in Indiana and North Carolina, he might do the same thing in Portugal and Fiji.

Perhaps a platoon of Bears fans could also be sent to show the city’s passion for sports. But they’d have to promise not to paint their faces. Plus, they’d want to tailgate outside the meeting room, and who knows what their cheers would be. “Rio sucks?”

This is the week Chicago should have the nation behind it. Even Packer fans. For a host country, the Olympics can mean headaches, turmoil, disputes — but it’s a pretty good gig, anyway.

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Yes, city craves the Summer Games, but, really, it just wants to be loved

Honey, if you just got to know me better, you’d know I’m as good as it gets. I may not be as hot as Rio, but I promise to show you a better time.

Love me? Please? And prove it, baby.

Give me something really big. You know. Like the Olympics.

One of Chicago’s infuriating charms is its swaggering insecurity, its relentless need to have its glories reaffirmed by the world. The city’s pursuit of the Olympics is our latest attempt to capture the recognition we’re convinced goes in greater supply to lesser cities like overrated New York, tawdry Los Angeles, wimpy San Francisco.

Last week, Mayor Richard Daley sounded the old Chicago love cry in an interview about our bid. “You don’t realize the importance, the global importance that Chicago will receive,” he said. “If you get this, it’s a major, major coup for the whole marketing strategy of Chicago.”

That’s right, baby, in Chicago when we say “love,” we’re always talking money, too. We may be needy, but we’re not naive.

Chicago’s quest to be widely loved — and then loved some more — is as old as the city itself. A uniquely American brand of boosterism was born in our muddy streets and swelled after the fire of 1871 burned the city to the brink of oblivion.

There’s a story about W.W. Everts, a renowned Baptist preacher, who shortly after the famous fire told his Chicago flock of a man traveling in Switzerland just before the city burned. The traveler had found a map of the United States that showed Milwaukee but not Chicago.

“Do you think another map will be published on this globe without Chicago?” the booster-preacher exhorted his congregation. “Do you think that there will be any intelligent man who will not know about Chicago? Oh no!”

Since then, Chicago has never stopped trying to make itself a bigger dot on the map.

The 1893 World’s Fair. The 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition. The 1996 Democratic National Convention. All were Chicago’s way of saying, “Look at me, world. Love me.”

Last November, for one ecstatic moment, it seemed the cry was heard. Barack Obama stood on a stage framed in the glow of Chicago’s skyscrapers, and the world saw what a spectacular city this is and that the first black American president lived among us. Chicago’s time, I heard it said a lot, was now.

Well, that was then. We need more.

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Change is coming whether Chicago gets the 2016 Summer Olympic Games or not–just not big change

By Blair Kamin

It’s easy to get carried away dreaming about how the Olympics might change Chicago. All that TV exposure! All those visitors spending all that money! Some giddy observers even have talked about a fifth star on the Chicago flag to accompany the four that symbolize such historic events as the Chicago World’s Fairs of 1893 and 1933-34.

Here’s some advice: Chill.

Sure, the games could do a lot for Chicago. They might erase the long-lingering image of Al Capone. Or prod the feds to kick in billions of dollars to upgrade the CTA. Or lead to new stores and housing in poor neighborhoods near Olympic venues. Or boost Chicago’s drive to become a city of global stature.

Some of this undoubtedly will transpire if Chicago gets the nod from the International Olympic Committee. But Chicago’s Olympic plans are actually quite modest. Besides, with President Barack Obama not committed to attending the big Olympic bake-off in Copenhagen Friday, it may be more realistic to ponder what will happen even if Chicago doesn’t get the 2016 Summer Games.

Think of the Museum Campus.

Back in the 1980s, then-Mayor Jane Byrne touted the idea of unified, landscaped campus that would join the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. It would be a major legacy, she said, of the planned 1992 Chicago World’s Fair.

Political infighting helped kill the fair. Yet the inspired notion that Chicago could shift the northbound lanes of Lake Shore Drive westward to create parkland acquired enough political momentum that it came off anyway — just a few years later than anticipated.

The equivalent in Chicago’s Olympic plans is the proposal to convert the former Michael Reese Hospital campus at 29th Street and Ellis Avenue into a high-rise residential complex that would serve as the Olympic Village.

The plan will go forward whether Chicago is selected or not, city officials say. Although landmarks advocates have bemoaned the pending demolition of hospital buildings co-designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, almost no one is disputing the plan’s core idea: This stretch of the south lakefront can be put to better use.

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Mr. President, we need more than just videos

Please go in person to Copenhagen

(a video message from you is not enough)

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We appreciate your support and previous videos, but it will not cut it in Copenhagen.

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For Chicago’s Bid, Yes, He Should

By Tracee Hamilton

Go, Mr. President. Go to Denmark and bring back the Olympics to your beloved Chicago, to the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, except when discussing health care reform.

Sending first lady Michelle Obama is a great start. But in sports parlance, you need a win. And the U.S. Olympic Committee could use the buzz your presence would provide. Let’s face it: You’re the ratings equivalent of a seven-game ALCS between the Yanks and the Sox.

The International Olympic Committee, in its infinite arrogance, expects the leader of each bid nation to attend the biennial “meetings” at which Olympic hosts are chosen. (Imagine a massive display of corporate excess that is not subsidized by a government bailout.)

On Oct. 2 in Copenhagen, IOC members will choose a host for the 2016 Summer Games. The contenders: Chicago, Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro.

How important is it for the leader of the free world to escort his wife to the party? Well, London got the 2012 Games after British Prime Minister Tony Blair jetted in for the vote, and Vladimir Putin did the same to get the 2014 Games for dark horse Sochi, Russia.

Talk about your peer pressure.

“All the other world leaders are doing it,” cries the Chicago 2016 bid crowd.

That is true. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako will attend (hello — a couple!). Heck, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain are going, and they’re old-school Euro royalty, for heaven’s sake, all armadas and global navigation and Raffy Nadal matches. Imagine how busy!

Thursday in Chicago, USOC officials faced a barrage of questions about Obama’s plans, which they deflected as diplomatically as possible. They did not actually fall to their knees in supplication, but they did make the deadly “puppy eye” maneuver. Asked later that afternoon about the president’s plans, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs initially said Obama wouldn’t attend, and when the Chicago media in the room leaped for him, he changed that answer to “we’ll check and see.”

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No Obama a sign Chicago Olympic bid is shaky

By TIM DAHLBERG (AP)

They couldn’t persuade the president to twist some arms for his adopted hometown’s Olympic bid, settling for the first lady instead. They don’t have their own special Olympic plane like the Spaniards, and no king to bring along for the ride to Copenhagen.

The French are against them, still bitter at having their own Olympics stolen a few years back.

And they can’t even bribe the voters anymore, a sport in which Chicagoans excel.

The battle to host the 2016 Olympics was never going to be an easy one, even for the city that works. It was one thing to beat out San Francisco to win the U.S. rights to bid, yet another to try and convince prickly International Olympic Committee voters that an Olympics in the United States is a good thing.

New York’s failed bid four years ago should have been a tip-off. If the self-proclaimed greatest city in the world couldn’t make it past the second round of voting for the 2012 games even with the emotional undertow of the 9/11 attacks, how could the windy city expect to do any better?

It’s too early to take down the Olympic banners just yet. But Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics seems to be sputtering just as the finalists make one last sprint toward the finish line.

The official word is that everything is just fine, and that the 106 IOC members who will decide in just a few weeks which city gets the games aren’t easily swayed by presidents, kings, airplanes — or even wads of $100 bills. Inspired by a noble cause, it’s clear the only thing they want is the honor of selecting the city best prepared to host the games.

OK, so much for the official word. But it is true that the process is somewhat cleaner than the good old days, when the quickest way to landing an Olympics was depositing plenty of cash and other payola into the pockets of greedy IOC members.

That helped get the United States its last Olympics, the winter games in Salt Lake City remembered best for oppressive security and a figure skating scandal. Before that, we gave the world Atlanta, a joyless affair in a city that didn’t seem to really care.

Now Chicago wants its chance. It has a plan everyone seems to like, a time zone that American television networks like, and, most recently, a financial guarantee from city leaders that the IOC certainly likes.

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2016 Olympic Bid and Racist Governor of Tokyo

By Lee Jay Walker
Tokyo Correspondent

The Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, desires to bring the Olympics to Japan, however, if this happens then what happened to the Olympic ideal? After all, we are talking about a racist and sexist who denies the Rape of Nanking and who blames foreign nationals for crime. Therefore, if Tokyo wins the right to host the 2016 Olympics it means that the “family of nations” is in the hands of a racist and sexist leader.

Therefore, it is up to individuals and organizations to campaign against the Tokyo Olympic bid because of past statements that Ishihara made. I am not talking about mild comments; on the contrary, I am talking about blatant nationalism and sexism.

I always believed that the Olympic ideals were meant to bring people together under one banner and where males and females were respected equally. However, clearly this does not apply to the Governor of Tokyo.

In a past article I mentioned that Ishihara “desires to leave a legacy” and if Tokyo wins then Ishihara and nationalists can gloss over their extreme views. Also, it will embolden other racists and sexists to pin the blame on foreign nationals and to follow the same racist path to power.

However, the real legacy of Ishihara is being anti-Korean, anti-Chinese and anti-foreign by nature. At the same time Ishihara is clearly sexist and how strange it would be for a person who deems females to be inferior and who wants to keep Japan for the Japanese, to be given his glory day!

All nations have a negative past however we expect our major leaders to move on and try to start afresh. However, Ishihara is very dangerous because he is keeping the heart of racial hatred alive and he belittles the history of both China and Korea by making outlandish statements. Given this, it is essential that the Olympic Committee understands the real motives of this unashamed individual who mocks the memory of many people, and who wants to employ revisionism and hatred of others in order to maintain power.

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Olympic plan protects taxpayers

STATEMENT FROM THE CIVIC FEDERATION -

The Civic Federation was pleased to read that David Greising agrees with the conclusion of our review of the 2016 Olympic Bid: that if the operating budget is professionally managed and subject to careful oversight, the plan provides adequate protection to taxpayers (“On deeper inspection, Olympics pitfalls abound,” News, Aug. 28).

However, we disagree with his interpretation of our analysis of the potential downside risk of the operating budget, which examines several possible revenue shortfalls and cost overruns.

Greising states that the individual shortfalls identified in our report do not constitute doomsday scenarios. He is correct, but when he adds up all of the individual scenarios to create an $864 million deficit he is in effect modeling a “doomsday worst case scenario.” Such a scenario is by definition not a reasonable risk, but a worst possible outcome.

The Civic Federation’s goal in the report was not to examine the unlikely event of a catastrophe, but what is reasonable based on the experience of previous Host Cities and other comparable events.

Finally, Greising is correct that the proposed insurance for the Games does not cover problems in the performance of the team running the Bid.

That is why the Federation and L.E.K. state that the contingency fund of $451 million, which does protect against such problems, and the insurance together constitute adequate protection for taxpayers.

As the Civic Federation states in our report, it is impossible to eliminate all risk from any event, but government, businesses and non-profits can identify possible risks and work to mitigate them.

This is what the Federation and L.E.K. believe the Chicago 2016 Olympic operating budget can do if it is professionally managed and given the appropriate rigorous oversight by the Chicago City Council.

— Laurence Msall, president,

the Civic Federation, Chicago

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The Olympics would be good for us — really

Cynicism aside, it’s a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

BY MARK BROWN - Sun-Times Columnist

Navy Pier - Chicago

The Olympics would be great for Chicago. This seems obvious to me on its face, and yet I realize it has become an increasingly unpopular viewpoint.

That’s why I want to drop the usual tone of cynicism and state unequivocally:

I’m for the Olympics.

If the city loses the bid to host the 2016 Games, we will be losing out on a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And if we lose because the public here is not on board, then it will be a tragic civic failure.

I say this being fully informed of the reasons to be opposed to the Olympics.

From the financial risk for taxpayers to the creation of another honeypot for insiders to all the potential hassles, I get it. I also understand the frustration and mistrust of Chicago citizens who have been taken for granted once too often by their political leadership.

Yet I would make the case that the benefits outweigh the risks, and that, as my mother used to say, you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

Which leads me to this question:

Has our city become so caught up in the “what’s in it for me” mentality that we can’t see what’s in it for US?

That’s the way it looks.

Thousands of jobs

here are plenty of benefits in the Olympics for us as a community: jobs, neighborhood development and public improvements, including a probable federally funded upgrade to our mass-transit system, to name a few. This is a multibillion-dollar undertaking — nearly all of which will come from somebody other than the taxpayers of Chicago.

What I can’t tell you is what’s in it for you individually.

I can’t tell you that the Olympics is going to put money in your pocket.

I can’t tell you that the Olympics is going to help you get a new or better job.

But there are going to be opportunities created that don’t exist today.

There are going to be thousands of jobs for somebody: construction jobs, jobs with the host committee, jobs for every entrepreneur who figures out how to make a buck off this mammoth event.

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London victory can inspire 2016 bid cities

By Duncan Mackay

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) are always very keen to emphasise that the Evaluation Commission Report they release a month ahead of the final vote to decide a Host City does not try to rank or categorise the candidates.

And every time they publish the Report the bidding cities and the media try to work out in which order the IOC has ranked them.

Nothing had changed yesterday when the IOC published its Evaluation Commission Report for the 2016 Games and Olympic-watchers like me came up with our own unofficial rankings list.

That is why in Rio de Janeiro last night the campaign leaders, if not quite cracking open the champagne, were probably at least allowing themselves a couple of caipirinhas to celebrate an overwhelmingly positive report, while in Tokyo and Madrid they were drowning their sorrows with a glass of Saki and rioja respectively after their bids were directly criticised by the IOC.

In Chicago, meanwhile, they probably just had a swift glass of Goose Island beer before bunkering down to come up with a strategy that will allow them during the next 30 days to convince the IOC members that they are not a potential financial liability if they are awarded the 2016 Olympics.

The race to host an Olympics is bit like a tactically run 10,000 metres. It meanders for lap-after-lap with only the real aficionados watching it and then the bell goes and suddenly everyone gets interested.

But does it matter? A bit like the Evaluation Commission’s visit to the four bidding cities in April and May, the Report generates plenty of headlines and column inches but it is harder to measure how much difference it makes in the final ranking. The IOC members are under no obligation to read the 98-page document before they cast their vote in Copenhagen on October 2.

I decided to get my scrapbook out and leaf through what I said after the IOC released its Evaluation Report in June 2005, a month before the vote for the 2012 Olympics. This is what I wrote in The Guardian about the glowing report that the Evaluation Commission had given Paris: “If it had been a school report it was the kind you would have run all the way home to show your mum and dad.”

Overlooked were the limitations of the Stade de France, with its awful sightlines when in athletics mode and poor back-of-house facilities, and the fact that at $480 a night, a room in a five-star hotel in Paris during the Games would be $190 more expensive than in London.

I remember Sebastian Coe (pictured) addressing the media a few minutes after he had seen the report and he proclaimed that it was a “springboard” for London to win. “A good evaluation on its own is not enough to get you over the line,” he said. “But we have the confidence to build the momentum this bid has enjoyed over the last year. We are in good shape to take the battle even harder and further towards our goal.”

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